Thursday, 29 January 2015

As you saw, my aim was to pay some attention to Orky details and make the ships suitable for the Warhammer 40,000 fluff. After some hours, this is what I got. Let me show the final results.

The White Dragons fleet is the informal denomination for the XF-O4-9753 Ork Fleet operating in the Eastern Fringe. Their infamous records include the Scourging of Agalphar, the Desecration of Thurginden II or the Battle of the Girthanys Straits. According to the latest intelligence reports, the fleet is currently composed by the following vessels (all Imperial 'informal' denominations):

All Battlegroups are adviced to act cautiously and immediately report any contact with any of these vessels.

I still have to calculate the point value of this fleet, but it's truly worthy of a full scale battle! Seeing the final result, I may want to revisit my old Chaos fleet (painted in painfully red tones, as everyone back in the day) and do something more oriented towards this concept. Besides, I still have a lot of Imperial ships that still remain unpainted. Shame on me!

I might take a breath before I face another fleet, but for sure this is not the last about BFG you see over here!

Monday, 26 January 2015

With my attention mostly focused on the Ork fleet these days, I've found a way of slipping away from that tiny madness and still make some decent progress on my big scenery project.

I've shown some buildings from Bandua earlier, both The Sparklin' Pulsar and Mama Balaklava's. I recently got some more scenery from them. Their sci-fi ranges are beautiful and provide that industrial generic looking every project is needing :P.

As the pack is multi-component, you can set a different number of configurations, just by removing the railing. Here you can see the scale:

OK, son, what are we doin' up here?

On the board they look like this:

Still have to find a function, but hey, it's cool

I also got this partially closed walkaway:

Should I add a ceiling?

Damn, this city has a lot of ways of gettin' lost.

Again, still have to decide what to do exactly with that, most probably I'll use it as an elevated connection between buildings... but I still have to build them!

Anyway, these were quite a quick work, just to keep me on the wire. Let's see how I finish the Ork ships and then I'll try to focus again (or not. Maybe I just get involved myself on new shenanigans, you know me...)

Thursday, 22 January 2015

Once I painted the black details, I begun the metals. Slow work, but kinda paying off:

Da big shipz

I must confess I love these scrappy ships

And so on until I get 33 ships

Maybe the Sharkies are my favourite ones

OK, now it was time to begin to give them the Reaver lookings. In order not to make them too flashy, I thought I could use a limited palette, only red and black (well, dark red mixed with dark brown on one part and black with dark blue on the other). I tried to stick to a kinda Orky style and I used simple patterns.

We ur elegantz!

Som' hourz later...

I'm still not satisfied with them, they lack details and personality, so I'm starting the new stage, painting each one of them with checkers, glyphs or whatever I'm able to achieve. Hopefully they'll look more like Orky stuff.

Monday, 19 January 2015

I guess Geralt of Rivia needs little introduction by now. Just in case, let me tell you that if you haven't read the books, you are missing one of the most interesting pieces of fantasy of the last years. Sword & sorcery at its top. Really, pals, you should read them.

Apparently the character is now better known for videogames, but I haven't have the opportunity of playing them (not that a videogames guy, I'm afraid).

Anyway, my mate got 'The Witcher' board game as a Xmas present. You know what that means... Those minis had to pass through my workbench :D. Googling for colour references is how I learnt about the videogames, and I got to know that these models are but the videogames characters made into minis.

Not much else to say, just let me show the guys. First of all, the Witcher himself, Geralt of Rivia:

The bastard who killed Bambi's family!

His (sometimes) most loyal companion Dandelion the bard:

Hiding something? Do not know what you are talking about, sir

Sorceress Triss Merigold, 'the Fourteenth of the Hill' (oh, you really need to read the books):

When you google 'Triss Merigold', the hard part is to find pics of her with clothes on!

And Yarpen Zigrin, master dragonslayer:

Better design than some of Peter Jackson's 'The Hobbit'

Just four minis, 32mm scale:

A company of heroes

Stop staring at her booty, you perv!

It's a pity they are only four characters. I miss Ciri (of course!), Yennefer, Milva, Cahir... Maybe we get lucky and come for further expansions! I must confess I know nothing about the game, rules or anything else. Hopefully we can solve that soon...

Thursday, 15 January 2015

That's it, as you just read, I'm embarking myself in a whole new crazy project! I'm coming back to BFG after maaany years. I already have two fleets, an Imperial and a Chaotic one, but some months ago, thanks to a friend (thanks, Carlos!), I became the proud owner of an Ork fleet. This is what I got:

This is the 'before' pic. Long way till I get an 'after' pic

The mere idea of painting all this made me shiver, brrrr :S

Could I get something fresh out of this? Would I be able to paint them in a decent way and not make them look like rubbish? These models are not easy, if I was to make them look convincing I'd better approach the project at full strength. That's what took me these months, being convinced that I could make something worthy out of this.

I clearly didn't want just another generic fleet as everyone else has. I've always seen these ships painted in plain black with bright red additions, and that's pretty much it. If you are lucky you may find a Bad Moon Clan fleet painted in yellow. No, I didn't want that. Those colours make the ships look even more scrappy and dull, and I really didn't want black ships to play on a black mat.

So I took another different direction. I had quite a fair idea of what I wanted...

A hint...

Firefly.

You know what I'm thinking...

Reaveeers!!

Oh, c'mon, this is exactly how I see them; wild, harsh, in awful, dreadful ships. The current models already look like wildlings, so I thought this could work.

As my Imperial fleet is already painted in light grey, I opted for a beige/cream approach, something like that. I primed them in a creamy white and gave them a wash with Vallejo Earth Brown:

Hmmm... too shiny

I gave a second wash then, this time with a darker brown:

Now they look properly dirt

While in the middle of the process I was quite unsure of how this was going to turn out. I'm still a little scared about them looking too bright, but I have faith in my plan. They look dirty, but not too much, and they don't look like elegant brand new Eldar either :P

I've painted the metallic areas in black, and it's beginning to look like something:

Beginning to get some contrast...

33 ships. 33. Once again my sanity is going downwards

I know these are not many pics and doesn't look too much, but believe me, there are already some hours involved here. :D

Monday, 12 January 2015

The title will be familiar to most of the readers here. In case it does not ring any bell, The Goblinaid event was set up in order to collect funds for mighty artist Kev Adams after he was attacked. Won't get into morbid details, that was long time ago. Enough to say I participated getting myself a pack of lovely Snorklings.

Besides, thanks to this hobby I've been blessed with amazingly kind people from distant places who share this same passion and are so gentle to give away items with a smile. One of them, Cheetor from Sho3box, sent me another bunch of tiny Greenskins (thank you, pal!). Here you have all of them:

Love this set wholeheartedly

Hangover vs. party hard

The only ones I got repeated. Anyway, aren't they lovely?

I find these slightly disturbing. Never pictured these as... mammals?

Grog for da greenies!

This one was supposed to be hanging from somewhere, but had no proper place

Finally I added this GW Snotling that happened to appear in my bitbox out of nowhere

You may be missing one mini in this band... Yup, the Goblinaid kit came along with a Kev Adams self portrait 28mm scale. I'm saving him for another totally different bunch. You'll see in time (I still have to buy the rest of the minis!), but you can figure out he will be playing a role as a civilian in my sci-fi settings ;)

Thursday, 8 January 2015

Last monday I told you about Onus!, but it hasn't been the only game I've played this Christmas time. I've a very busy bee (well, at least for my standards!) and I've managed to play a few new games :D

The thing is, shame on me, I had not painted a single mini of any of them! :(

But let me explain. I'm afraid I didn't take enough pics of any of these games to make a proper AAR, but I didn't want to leave the opportunity of talking, though briefly, of them.

The first one is Krosmaster: Arena. Or how to play 8-bits anime on a board. Not exactly kawaii, but very close to. Though I thought this wasn't going to be my cup of tea, I must admit it's quite fun and makes a perfect choice for kids.

We were four players, each one controlling two minis

The pic above says quite it all, I believe. The board is quite moderate for any table, the minis are supplied painted and the scenery is cardboard made, so everything's pretty easy to set up.

It's likely to be a videogame set on a board; the dynamics are really easy to aprehend and the game essentially consists in hitting everyone else!

You can even hit boxes, bushes and trees for gold. 8-bits arcade power!

Each character has particular abilities that allow the tiny guys to make more hits, to heal other members of their team, etc.

I just need some retro music to play this

That's quite much the game, it hardly takes more than... half an hour? A little more maybe? to run a game, so again, perfect choice for small kids unable to concentrate more than that time! (That includes myself!)

The second game we played (that was another day!) was a real classic... Escape from Colditz.

I remember the TV series (based on actual events) when I was a child, but I've never been able to find it later :(. The game, a reedition of the original, is about escaping from a German high-security POW prison during WWII. Apparently the castle is quite more friendly nowadays.

So we prepared ourselves...

That was the Germaniest attire we were able to find. Beer on the right is German too

One of the players acts as the warden (black pawns) and the other players have to try their best to escape. Thay can team up, exchange items they find all over the castle and come up with a plan in order to get as many prisoners as possible out of the castle to the designated escape squares.
So they can forge an official document, they can make a rope out of blankets, they can steal wire cutters or even dig out a tunnel!

You can lower yourself with a rope from the windows (white circles), but some windows are higher than others!

Your strategy may involve scattering your men all over the castle and make it difficult for the wardens to follow everyone, or maybe make some players annoy the wardens in order to distract them while the others get the escape items and try to break out.

Through a bribe and a rope a prisoner gets out of the castle

The game is terribly fun and it makes you think a lot! If you ike the ambientation, this is a must have.

The third (and last) game I'm showing today is the Mansions of Madness. I had heard a lot of positive feedback and was really curious about it. I must say, just learning how to play is the first step into madness...

Millions of cards and tokens. Insanely detailed

I guess most of you are familiar with the background of this. Lovecraftian horror at its top, really environmental. The recreation of the atmosphere is superb, the investigators must go through the mansion getting the clues in order to solve the mistery, while the 'Keeper' will summon creatures or paranormal events that will affect the characters. So the game is not only a struggle with the bad guys, but with the mansion itself as well as the characters' own fears.

Fear to a maniac with an axe, for example. Quite a reasonable fear, if you ask my opinion

Corpses raising from the basement, an old power lurking in the darkness... Quite valid excuses for fear too

The cooperative nature of the game encourages the players to look for a common strategy and to share the objects they found through the mansion according to their skills and... well, as I'm writing this I believe this is pretty much the Colditz game with a horror twist! :D

The characters cannot only be hurt, but can also be literally driven crazy, by losing their sanity points. As a matter of fact that happened in this game, an investigator lost his mind, begun to see monsters where there was none, attacked his fellows and finally ended up taking his own life (yuk!)

Epic moment when one of the investigators turns against his fellows. Perfect timing, having a guy with an axe next to them

The game is kinda complex, but the details make it great. The growing horror, making each turn more and more claustrophobic, adds tension (and fun!). The game was solved by the end of the very last turn, all was on the edge, so a really fun experience.

Of course you can count on me painting the minis. When I have them finished we'll have another game and I'll make a full review of the game. In the meantime, if you have interest in any of the other games above, just let me know and we'll gladly find the time to play and make a review! :D (Ahhh, it's a hard life...)